By Nettie Owens, CPO-CD · The Sappari Group

Originally explored on Wake Up Women Leaders — Episode 19

In a widely cited study, prisoners who appeared before a parole judge early in the morning or after a break were granted parole approximately 70% of the time. Those who appeared before the same judge late in the day were paroled less than 10% of the time. Same judge. Same types of cases and legal standards. The only variable was when in the day the decision was made.

If it is happening to trained judges making consequential decisions about human freedom, it is happening to you.

Decision fatigue is not a personality trait, a confidence issue, or a sign that you are not cut out for the role you are in. It is a physiological reality — and for women leaders running organizations where every question, every approval, and every problem runs through them, it is slowly dismantling the quality of leadership that their organizations depend on every single day.

In Episode 19 of Wake Up Women Leaders, Victoria Whitfield and I defined decision fatigue — what it is, what it looks like in practice, and what structural changes actually address it.

What Decision Fatigue Actually Is

Decision fatigue is what happens when the brain’s decision-making capacity runs low either from making too many decisions, too many inputs, or general physical fatigue. Victoria described it this way: “It’s a state of mental exhaustion where you have a creative vision, you have opinions, you have things that you want to say — but at a certain point you hit a mental wall where the thought of choosing a definitive outcome and going with it is too exhausting to take.”

Decision-making is primarily housed in the prefrontal cortex of your brain — the most evolutionarily recent part of the human brain, the most energy-intensive, and the most susceptible to depletion. When that part of the brain runs low on the cognitive fuel it needs to function, the brain does not simply slow down. It shifts modes. The prefrontal cortex — responsible for rational analysis, impulse control, and complex problem-solving — goes partially offline. What takes over is the brain’s more reactive, survival-oriented circuitry.

“It’s a physical problem that has to do with your brain. Rather than being broken, your brain is operating exactly as designed. It’s telling you, ‘Hey, we’re done. Time to shut down.'”

The result is not incompetence. It is a fully functional brain conserving energy, avoiding complexity, and choosing the easiest available option when its highest-demand functions become depleted.

Which is why the salad at noon becomes the Oreos at 4pm. Same person. Same values. Different cognitive state.

Research from Columbia University found that leaders make approximately double the daily decisions of non-leaders. And women leaders who carry both professional and domestic decision-making loads are drawing from the same finite cognitive resource across both domains simultaneously. The depletion compounds. The system has no way of knowing that the decision about what to cook for dinner is less important than approving a contract an hour later. They are both inputs and at a point too many inputs becomes too much.

Women leaders and decision fatigue are not a topic for self-help books. They are a structural issue that shows up in board rooms, team meetings, and late-afternoon emails that should have waited until morning.

How Decision Fatigue Shows Up in Your Leadership

The problem with women leaders and decision fatigue is that its early signs are easy to misread. Leaders experiencing it often attribute the symptoms to other causes — overwork, difficult team dynamics, lack of confidence, poor time management — without identifying the underlying pattern.

Here is what it actually looks like.

Irritability that seems out of proportion. You have been making high-stakes decisions well all day. Someone comes in at 4pm and asks whether you want the left version or the right version of a slide. You snap. Not because the question is unreasonable. Because your decision-making capacity is full and that small ask overflows the system. “The next person who comes into your office to ask you a question — you respond with irritability. It’s as if you can’t put the pieces together.”

Defaulting to the status quo. When the brain is depleted, it stops generating options and starts looking for the fastest exit from the decision. The fastest exit is almost always whatever is already in place. This is why leaders defer significant organizational changes, avoid the harder conversations, and end meetings before they reach the most important agenda items.

Impulsive late-day decisions. The other response to depletion is not avoidance but impulsivity — making a quick decision just to close the loop, without the analytical depth that the decision actually requires. A 2024 study in Frontiers in Cognition found that as mental exhaustion increases, leaders increasingly rely on heuristic decision-making strategies, which result in less accurate judgments. In simple terms: fast decisions made late in the day are frequently wrong decisions.

Going silent. The email that has been sitting in the draft folder for three days. The conversation that needs to happen but keeps getting postponed. The proposal that needs a response that has not come.

Accumulation. When the pattern runs for weeks without a reset, the effects do not stay contained to the end of the day. The chronic depletion starts affecting morning decisions. It affects how leaders show up in meetings. It affects team culture — because how the leader shows up when depleted is what the team learns to expect and work around. “The fallout from decision fatigue is reactive mode. It is a lowering of standards. It is making a decision you would have never made in the past.”

The Values Foundation

Before getting to the structural changes, Victoria made a point that decision fatigue is not purely a structural issue.

“Structural issues are spiritual issues — because it’s a lack of values awareness. If you aren’t clear on what your values are, you are going to struggle to lead yourself. And if you are struggling to lead yourself, you are going to struggle to lead others.”

The structures only hold if the values behind them are clear. Victoria’s example was her own boundary around no alcohol at retreats — a decision that has been tested repeatedly by attendees who push against it, especially when she is tired. “When I’m tired and I have no decisions left to give, my willpower has run out. But what remains are my standards (values).”

That is the insight: willpower is a depletable resource. Standards are not. Clearly defining your values and committing to them in advance eliminates the need to spend decision-making energy in the moment. You have already made the decision.

I call them pre-made decisions. “When you make decisions ahead of time, when you are in full cognitive mode, then when those faculties are offline, those decisions were already made. You don’t have to run the risk of willpower or decision fatigue because now we’re just relying on pre-made decisions.”

Pre-made decisions are not just personal values. They are documented processes, defined authority levels for your team, written criteria for recurring choices, and clear standards for what requires your involvement and what does not. Every decision you make once and document is a decision you never have to make again.

The Structural Changes That Actually Help

Once the values and pre-made decisions are in place, there are concrete structural changes that protect women leaders from decision fatigue accumulating to the point of organizational damage.

Move your most important decisions to the morning. The parole judge study is not just an interesting data point — it is a scheduling principle. Your best cognitive capacity is available early. If you wait until the end of the day to make your most consequential decisions—after you’ve triaged your inbox, answered team questions, and managed operational fires—you rely on your worst available resources for your most important decisions. Audit where your high-stakes decisions currently land. Move them earlier.

Reduce decision volume. The single most direct way to address women leaders and decision fatigue is to reduce the number of decisions landing on your desk. This means documenting your processes so your team can find answers without coming to you. It means defined authority levels so people know what they can decide without you. It means delegating decisions alongside tasks. “Any amount of system planning, any amount of documenting a process — you are making the decision once and then following that plan. Not trying to figure it out on the fly.”

Simple examples: a uniform for your workdays so you are not choosing an outfit every morning. A meal delivery service during the week so dinner is not a decision. A written schedule that automates recurring choices about when you exercise, when you record, when you meet with your team. Barbara Corcoran writes her three big boulder tasks for the next day before she goes to bed at night. She wakes up and executes. The decision is already made.

Build decision-free zones. Create blocks in your calendar where no new inputs come in. No team questions, no approvals, no emails that require a response. These blocks are not idle time. They are the recovery windows that allow the prefrontal cortex to restore enough capacity to function well in the next cycle.

Use productive rest as a reset. Victoria’s practice is strategic meditation — a specific approach to restoring clarity between decision cycles. My version is what I call productive rest: a walk between meetings, water, a short break that does not involve a screen, fresh air where possible. “If you work from home, you could take a shower in the middle of the day — this is a wonderful reset for your body and mind.” The goal is to interrupt the depletion cycle before it reaches the critical point where the dashboard lights all come on at once.

Write a “never again” list. Victoria introduced this as a specific exercise for women leaders who believe they are indecisive. Set a five-minute timer and write every decision you have ever had to remake because you did not hold your own standard the first time. Those are your never-agains. Writing them down once converts them from decisions into standards. “Do not buy the lie that you are indecisive. You are decisive. They look to you.”

Three Things to Do This Week

1 Audit where your most important decisions land in the day. If they are happening after noon, that is a scheduling problem, not a capacity problem. Move them.

2 Write your “Never Again” list. Set a timer for five minutes and grab a sheet of paper or open your notes app. What decisions do you keep making over and over that you could make once and never revisit? Start there.

3 Build one decision-free block into tomorrow’s calendar. Ninety minutes minimum. No inputs, no approvals, no team questions. Protect it.

What’s Coming Next

In Episode 20, Victoria and I are doing something new. A real leader brings a real challenge — and we coach live on air. If that is you, drop CONNECT in the comments. Join us Wednesday at 3:30pm ET.

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Nettie Owens, CPO-CD · The Sappari Group · sapparigroup.com · © 2026